Photographys Antiquarian Avant Garde

And now, for the first time in book form, Photography's Antiquarian Avant-Garde charts this full-blown rebellion of contemporary photographers against the advent of digital technology and their reversion to photographic methods used in the nineteenth century.".

The photographs presented in the book, made with the ambrotype process - resulting in one-of-a-kind images captured on glass - represent a new stage in photography, the so-called "antiquarian avant-garde," that is, the radical rediscovery of obsolete photographic techniques. Sergei Romanov goes further than any other contemporary photographer in pushing his medium into imagistic territory never approached before, because he has ignored all the rules: he just doesn't care about good taste, or perfect craftsmanship, or total control, or conceptual strategies. He is deeply convinced that what is most important (and most often missing in today's photography) is an ineffable spirit - and he will risk everything to evoke it. When he succeeds, his images possess the uncanny physical presence of the living body, the primal magnetism of sexuality, and the hypnotic involvement of an hallucination. A waking dream. Sergei Romanov (b. 1970) is one of Russia's preeminent photographers. Entirely self-taught, Romanov produces distinctive ambrotype images featuring hyper-stylized female nudes and other subjects. Highly expressive in their dark surrealism, these staged photographs nod to Sally Mann on the one hand and fashion photographers such as Helmut Newton, Sarah Moon, and Ellen von Unwerth on the other. Romanov's work is included in the permanent collections of the Musei Moskvy, Kunstmuseum Luzern, and the San Diego Museum of Art, as well as in a number of private collections, including that of Juan Antonio Pérez Simón.

Conveys the energy and joy of the Russian theatre between about 1900 and 1930.

Written by internationally acclaimed artist and photographer Christopher James, THE BOOK OF ALTERNATIVE PHOTOGRAPHIC PROCESSES: 3rd Edition is the definitive text for students and professionals studying alternative photographic processes and the art of hand-made photographic image making. This innovative Third Edition brings the medium up to date with new and historic processes that are integrated with the latest contemporary innovations, adaptations, techniques, and art work. This 800 page edition is packed with more than 700 exquisite illustrations featuring historical examples as well as the art that is currently being made by professional alternative process, artists, teachers, and students of the genre. The third edition is the complete and comprehensive technical and aesthetic resource exploring and delving into every aspect of alternative photographic process photography. Each chapter introduces the history of a technique, presents an overview of the alternative photographic process that will be featured, reviews its chemistry, and provides practical and easy to follow guidance in how to make it work. In his conversational writing style, James also explores the idiosyncrasies, history, and cultural connections that are such a significant part of the history of photography. Featuring traditional and digital contact negative production as well as an array of processes, spread out over 28 chapters, THE BOOK OF ALTERNATIVE PHOTOGRAPHIC PROCESSES: 3RD EDITION delivers clear instructions, practical workflows and advice, humor, history, art, and immeasurable inspiration. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.

From the beginning, abstraction has been intrinsic to photography, and its persistent popularity reveals much about the medium. Now available in an affordable paperback edition, The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography is the first book in English to document this phenomenon and to put it into historical context, while also examining the diverse approaches thriving within contemporary photography. Author Lyle Rexer examines abstraction at pivotal moments, starting with the inception of photography, when many of the pioneers believed the camera might reveal other aspects of reality. The Edge of Vision traces subsequent explorations--from the Photo-Secessionists, who emphasized process and emotional expression over observed reality, to Modernist and Surrealist experiments. In the decades to follow, in particular from the 1950s through the 1980s, a multitude of photographers--Edward Weston, Aaron Siskind, Barbara Kasten, Ellen Carey and James Welling among them--took up abstraction from a variety of positions. Finally, Rexer explores the influence the history of abstraction exerts on contemporary thinking about the medium. Many contemporary artists--most prominently Penelope Umbrico, Michael Flomen, and Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin--reject classic definitions of photography's documentary dimension in favor of other conceptually inflected possibilities, somewhere between painting and sculpture, that include the manipulation of process and printing. In addition to Rexer's engagingly written and richly illustrated history, this volume includes a selection of primary texts from and interviews with key practitioners and critics, such as Alvin Langdon Coburn, László Moholy-Nagy, Gottfried Jägger, Silvio Wolf and Walead Beshty.

An excellent beginners’ guide to cyanotypes – all you need to get started, and some goodies for more advanced cyanotypers too. About the book The cyanotype is often the first alternative process that people try. It is relatively easy and safe enough to nurture a child’s interest in photography. It can also be seen as a gateway to further exploration of historic photographic methods. In addition, it gives experienced photographers and artists a great excuse to take their eyes off the computer screen and get their hands dirty. Blueprint to cyanotypes is all you will need to get started with cyanotypes. It offers the beginner a step-by-step guide, from choosing material to making the final print. It is full of information and tips. Even the experienced cyanotypist may learn a thing or two. Blueprint to cyanotypes is published by AlternativePhotography.com – a website and information center dedicated to alternative photographic processes. From Malin Fabbri, the author: Why a book on cyanotypes? Of all the alternative processes the cyanotype is the one closest to my heart. I made my first cyanotype in 1999. I was intrigued by the blue images and wanted to test the cyanotype process to see what it had to offer. I bought chemicals and spent an evening coating paper and cloth. The results of the next day’s printing surprised me. Although the alchemy of the darkroom had always captivated me, developing a print in the sun was like a liberation. One of the things I found most refreshing about the process was the unpredictability of the results. Some of my best prints were the product of ‘happy accidents’. The developing process is straightforward. The chemicals are cheap, and most of the other items used can be found around the house. Pre-coated paper is available, but one of the benefits of working with cyanotypes is the great flexibility of material and paper available to you. Cyanotypes print on anything made of natural fibre. Cotton, linen, silk, handmade paper, watercolor paper and rags are just number of alternatives. Some artists even print on wood. So, if you want to explore a fun alternative photographic process or seriously want to experiment with producing unique fine art, make a cyanotype.

Recent decades have seen a flourishing interest in and speculation about the origins of photography. Spurred by rediscoveries of ‘first’ photographs and proclamations of photography’s death in the digital age, scholars have been rethinking who and what invented the medium. Photography and Its Origins reflects on this interest in photography’s beginnings by reframing it in critical and specifically historiographical terms. How and why do we write about the origins of the medium? Whom or what do we rely on to construct those narratives? What’s at stake in choosing to tell stories of photography’s genesis in one way or another? And what kind of work can those stories do? Edited by Tanya Sheehan and Andrés Mario Zervigón, this collection of 16 original essays, illustrated with 32 colour images, showcases prominent and emerging voices in the field of photography studies. Their research cuts across disciplines and methodologies, shedding new light on old questions about histories and their writing. Photography and Its Origins will serve as a valuable resource for students and scholars in art history, visual and media studies, and the history of science and technology.

For over two decades visual artist and historian Brenton Hamilton has created a sustained body of work, mostly concentrated within the historic processes employing nineteenth century photography techniques, no longer commercially available. Hamilton has produced a unique body of work using methodologies like gum bichromated forms, platinum, and collodion ambrotypes on black glass, French variants of paper calotypy and of course the embellished cyanotype. Influenced by the Surrealist motifs; coaxing dream like, chance collisions of fragments from art history, Hamilton shapes a new landscape in his photographs. The present symbolism of the dark night sky and the freedom to look outside himself towards unfettered ideas and musings, learning to make a new place with paper and metal salts and light allowing him to rest and wonder. He combines human anatomy, astronomy and botanical imagery to create intriguing and provocative arrangements. His work references to ancient Greece and Rome, as well as 15th and 16th century Dutch and Italian paintings. Hamilton uses symbols and visual elements from the history of art to create a thoroughly contemporary vision.

Jerry Spagnoli is one of the world's foremost daguerreotypists and this book brings together the last decade of his work, including selections from his Western Landscape and Anatomical Studies series and a comprehensive presentation of his documentary series The Last Great Daguerreian Survey of the Twentieth Century. Adopting a narrative form which unifies what at first appears to be disparate subjects, the viewer is led on a journey through a world distilled through the idiosyncratic perspective of the daguerreotype, a world which is both familiar and uncanny. Daguerreotypes have long been noted for their accuracy and veracity. In the hands of Spagnoli the technical limitations of the medium, the long exposures, odd tonalities, shallow focus and the necessity of large cumbersome cameras, are exploited to produce images which are at once completely objective yet intensely personal.